


Blooming

by DustOnBothSides



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Armitage Hux Has Issues, Armitage Hux Needs A Hug, Armitage Hux is Not Nice, Body Horror, Brendol Hux's A+ Parenting, Cussing, Heavy Drinking, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, M/M, Protective Kylo Ren, Scientist Hux, elaborate erotic fantasies, living works of art
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:20:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26587255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DustOnBothSides/pseuds/DustOnBothSides
Summary: In a quarantine zone full of mutated people live the brilliant researcher Hux and his former subject Kylo, now cured of the disease and partially immune. Kylo collects samples for Hux and often has to suppress his urge strangle the good-looking yet twisted scientist. They are the only two sentient people in the zone, which is becoming more and more grotesque as time goes by. Will they join the infected or can they somehow beat the odds and find happiness?Includes wonderful illustrations made bystar
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Comments: 7
Kudos: 176
Collections: Kylux Big Bang 2020





	1. Kylo

A lone M-type was shambling down the sunlit, debris-covered street of what used to be the entertainment district, swaying from side to side as if drunk. The infected weren’t usually too keen on the sun, their eyes being much too large and oversensitive, but some of the aberrants, this particular M-type included, were the (fortunately) uncommon exception to the rule due to their overall _lack_ of eyes. 

This one still wore the tattered remains of a black skirt-suit along with a blouse stained rusty-brown. Its legs were bare, feet torn to shreds by shards of glass carpeting the street, but the monstrous arm dragging on the ground next to them was completely unharmed. Its nightmarish amalgam of bone, cartilage, and strands of muscle has grown too tough to be damaged by mere glass. 

This arm was also what gave the M-types their name. The _Manus_ -type. It was quite sizeable, even for the species. Kylo estimated it had to be about three metres long from the shoulder-spike down to the fingertips. Fortunately, only the left arm was like this. The right one was oddly shrivelled and shrunken, its sickly pink skin mottled by ugly, mould-like blotches. 

Kylo bit his lip and hid behind an overturned car. 

The M-type didn’t seem to have any objective in mind. It took a couple of steps, then stopped, then took several more, then stopped again. Once it passed him and made another pause, Kylo risked a quick glance from behind his hiding place. It appeared the M-type was actually _sunbathing_. Rays of light that fell on its mutated arm showed the pulsating ulcers on its shoulder-blade and the twitching ropes of muscle in all their sickening glory. The aberrant didn’t move for a while, but then it started to gently rock from side to side. Kylo could hear a sound. A melody. An eerily distorted tune that was carried through the silence of the desolate city.

Goose-bumps sprung up on his arm. He _hated_ when they did this, and he hated that he recognised the song in spite of its off-key delivery. It was the refrain from _‘Minor Earth Major Sky’_ by A-Ha, repeated over and over again. 

He frowned and crept away as quietly as possible into a nearby store where he used a rope to climb up into its second storey that served as one of his emergency bases. 

It was there where his comm-link came to life. 

Kylo cursed. 

“What are you doing?” the voice on the other end asked with its trademark clipped, snooty accent which sometimes made Kylo want to break something. 

“What do you mean?”

“You know I’m watching you. Get back down there and kill it.”

Okay - more than _sometimes_. Most of the times, more like it. 

“I do not remember agreeing to any sort of daily quota.”

“But you are very much aware how important aberrants are for my research. An M-type on its own is a pretty good catch. M-type retaining the vestiges of its memory even more so. So make yourself useful, return down there at once, put it down, and collect the usual samples.”

“How about you go fuck yourself.”

“Na-ah-aah, language, Ren, lest you won’t get your candy.”

“Fuck you, ginger prick.” Kylo growled, turned the comm-link off and spun around to flip a nearby camera the bird. 

Grumpily muttering to himself about what a certain redhead can do with certain parts of his anatomy, he climbed up on the third floor, squeezed himself through a barricade and took his position on the platform of a fire escape. Then he grabbed his rifle he carried everywhere, clipped on its telescopic sight and loaded the weapon with a magazine of his _special_ projectiles. 

He aimed at the head and took a deep breath. Not only he had to be quick, his hands needed to be _steady_. Allowing himself a moment to compose his mind, he let the air out of his lungs and just they emptied, he pulled the trigger. He pulled the trigger, adjusted the angle by several degrees and pulled it again, all of that in-between two beats of his heart. 

Bullet number one hollowed out the M-type’s head, and its sibling turned the cluster of ulcers on the aberrant’s shoulder into a cloud of bone fragments and pulverized tissue. And not a second too soon, for the instant the first bullet hit its mark, the oversized arm began to separate from the body and sprout several smooth, fleshy prolegs. With the auxiliary brain destroyed, however, it simply flopped to the ground and went still after several last twitches. 

If Kylo hadn’t possessed his inhuman speed, the arm would’ve gone straight for his head. In the past, several highly unpleasant encounters had taught him that these splinters could somehow calculate the trajectory of the blow which had killed the main body and follow it. If Kylo wasn’t who he was, there would’ve been a new aberrant shuffling about. Not that he considered his current physical status to be particularly agreeable, in spite of the perks it brought.

He made sure it was safe out there and climbed down to collect the samples for Hux. 

The sleepy midday slowly flowed into an even sleepier afternoon. 

Morning winds died away and everything was so still, so horribly stationary, one would’ve been forgiven to mistake the streets for a dusty old diorama forgotten in some ancient museum depository. The only thing that moved was the air shimmering above the oven that the August city became.

Kylo couldn’t believe that up until some half a year ago, he had a stable, mundane job and a stable, mundane life. On mornings he used to go jogging around the neighbourhood, towards the evenings he then hit the gym to work out the stress accumulated during the day, and every now and then he went out with friends. There were good times as well as bad, but his life seemed to have floated on the rhythm of Creedence Clearwater Revival songs. A stable, mundane, _good_ life. 

Perhaps too good. 

One month after it all went to hell he woke up in a hospital bed, strapped to its sturdy frame by a dozen of thick leather straps. The hall he found himself in was partitioned by thick sheets of acrylic glass into a number of hexagonal segments, each containing a horror of some kind. The air was constantly permeated by the stench of disinfectant, human excrements, and something sickeningly sweet, along with noises Kylo didn’t care to remember, but which often haunted his dreams. 

It felt like he had fallen into one of those stories where the protagonist is whisked away into an unfamiliar, dangerous world and now has to find his way back home. More often than not he has to battle a demon king at the end, and when he returns, he does so with riches, wisdom, or at least a new belief in himself. 

Kylo heaved a sigh as he ascended yet another flight of stairs. 

The fiftieth floor was where the demon king of his own personal story lived. Unlike those in the books, this one was thin, slim-shouldered, and more terrifying than anything a pen could ever produce. 

Cursing Hux’s refusal to restore the power to at least a single elevator, Kylo took a break on the thirtieth. The view of the city below didn’t do much to improve his mood. Its colours he remembered as being so vivid and bright in the past now appeared dirty and muddled. With a bitter grimace on his face, he turned around, did a couple of stretches to alleviate the stiffness in his back and wiped his face into the shirt he took off. 

It was absolutely _sweltering_. 

As this high-rise was spared most of the violence which had damaged the rest of the quarter, its windows were largely intact, which also meant the air inside _did not move_. At all. Kylo resumed his climb, and soon the heat got so punishing, he lost even the energy to swear. By the time he reached the floor of Hux’s penthouse, he was drenched with his own sweat and fought the urge to stick his head into the cooler he carried over his shoulder. 

He tapped a seven-digit code into a small keypad and entered an empty anteroom with a ridiculously tough blast-door fitted into the opposite wall. Releasing its safety with a key-card Hux had given him, he grabbed the handle and turned it until the valve swung slowly open. The next room, narrow and white-tiled from floor to ceiling, contained a small rubber mat. Kylo set the cooler down, stepped onto the mat, spread his arms and closed his eyes. A cloud of disinfectant swallowed him up and passed over his body, heavy and damp like summer rain. The rain that the city hasn’t seen for the better part of two months. A flashing green light he noticed from under his closed lids then informed him that the air was breathable again. He grabbed the cooler and waited to be let into the demon king’s realm.

A moment later the lock clicked and the door was pushed open by one of Hux’s creations: a headless torso with no legs and three pairs of arms. A processing unit was grafted onto its spine and a failsafe in form of a metallic spike jutted out of its stumpy neck, ready to destroy the medulla oblongata in the unlikely event of the body somehow freeing itself from the processing unit’s yoke. 

One of its hands was closed around a pen-like object. Kylo duly held his arm out so the needle inside could check his blood for infection. Once his results came out as negative, the other two creations, giants three metres tall who had flanked Kylo from both sides, their blade arms ready to strike, slunk back into the shadows. 

He was aware the six-armed usher as well as both guards used to be actual people with their own lives and agencies Back Then, but their forms, altered to serve their new function and Hux’s _special_ aesthetic tastes, were one of the easier aspects of this new world he had to get used to. He hardly even noticed them these days. 

Unlike Hux. 

Who should’ve been waiting for him by now, his probes and sharp tongue ready. 

The doctor, however, was nowhere to be seen. 

His six-armed bioroid scuttled away, and Kylo took a good look around the room. 

Like everything in Hux’s penthouse, it was a sterile-looking place. Its walls of white flowed with futuristic, streamlined curves directly into the ceiling criss-crossed by stripes of minute lighting fixtures. There was hardly any corner in sight. The floor was covered by large, jet-black tiles polished to a mirror-like gloss, reflecting trees growing from bulky concrete planters and small geometric arrangements made of low maintenance plants, fine sand, and pieces of rock. 

“Hux?” Kylo called out. 

No response. 

Kylo’s eyebrows knitted, and then he outright frowned as he spotted another bioroid lurking nearby. 

It was Phanes. 

Phanes was made of resin, ceramics, surgical steel, and human parts. A perfectly beautiful androgynous doll with a white mask attached to its face and artificial, featureless genitalia of both sexes between its legs. Its synthetic, over-emphasized joints made it look like Hans Bellmer’s wet dream, and though it never spoke to or even acknowledged Kylo, Hux’s former patient had always an unpleasant feeling the thing was watching him - and judging. 

Kylo never liked Phanes – a fact Hux never failed to draw amusement from. 

Hux, who wasn’t there.

_‘I climbed fifty damn floors to bring him those damn samples and he doesn’t even have the decency to meet me. Or at least to put that freaky thing away. I wish he would cover it up. Is a damn loincloth_ that _much to ask? And what the hell does a bioroid need a dick for?’_

Another thought sprung into Kylo’s mind. He quickly pushed it away and started to search the penthouse. 

It didn’t take long. He discovered Hux on the terrace, curled-up on a deck-chair in the shade of a futuristic sun screen. His datapad had fallen out of his hands and on a table next to him was an empty half-a-litre mug of coffee. The first few buttons of his crisp white shirt were undone, and Kylo could see a glimpse of pale lines crossing the smooth skin of his bared shoulder. Once he saw even more of those scars, when he had tackled Hux to the ground after one jibe too many, and when he asked about them few days later, Hux adamantly refused to answer any of his questions or even acknowledge he _had_ any scars. 

Hux was an enigma, simultaneously intriguing and frustrating. 

Right now, Kylo found the latter quality being far more prominent. 

He tried to overlook how handsome, almost _serene_ the man looked in his sleep and shook his shoulder, taking pleasure from how Hux jolted awake. 

“ _Wh-_ oh, it’s you.” The doctor muttered and rubbed his eyes. 

“Yes, me. I have climbed damn fifty floors hauling your damn samples on my back, and the princess is asleep in her tower.”

“Shut up. You took so long, I nodded off.” 

Hux grabbed his oversized mug and pulled a face when he saw only a dried stain on the bottom. Then he yawned and blinked in the fresh northern breeze ruffling his hair. He looked slightly absent-minded, as if his thoughts were still chasing after a dream. 

Kylo stepped away, unsure what to think. 

To see Hux _this_ unguarded was worrisome. 

“Did something happen?” Kylo asked. 

Hux stopped in mid-yawn, flashed him a haughty look and buttoned up his shirt. 

“ _You taking too long_ is what happened. Everyone sleeps, Ren. And besides-“He suddenly paused and looked his visitor up and down. “Whoa. Are you returning from a beefcake photoshoot? Do you stun infectees with your mighty boobs?”

“Hux. You live on the fiftieth floor. You refuse to fix the elevator. The A/C is off and it’s _summer_ , for Christ’s sake. And they’re not boobs, they’re _pecs_.”

“Yes, whatever, titty-monster.”

Kylo wanted to snap something back, but then he had a better idea. 

“Would you like to touch them?” 

“Sod off.” Hux huffed, but just before he turned away, Kylo noticed the hint of a blush. 

“Feel free to do so. I worked hard to get them, so it feels nice when people show some appreciation.” Kylo continued, puffing his chest out, though usually he would’ve kept his mouth shut. He told himself that after the purgatory of fifty god-damn floors, he was entitled to some fun. 

Hux drew himself to his full height. Kylo forgot how tall the man actually was, being used to seeing him hunched over his experiments or sitting in the comfort of his armchair, his many screens reflected in his glasses.

“ _Appreciate them_ , you say?” he asked with a nasty little smirk. “Sure, I appreciate your biology. I have pictures of it taken with an electron microscope, and I must admit I do love the structure of your bone marrow. Your myeloblasts are rather charming and your granulocytes fascinate me. They are, after all, one of the reasons the Theta-therapy worked so well on you. Too bad you don’t remember anything from that time, though. Like the part when I took a huge, huge needle and rammed it in your spine. Now if you want me to _appreciate your biology_ some more, take a shower, get dressed, and wait for me in the phlebotomy room. I’ll draw some blood before giving you your candy.”

“Always such a pleasure to work with you, doctor…” Kylo remarked sourly, still creeped out by all the things from his _‘fugue state’_ he did not remember. 

“You started it. Go now. I want to see you in the chair and ready by the time a have a new pot of coffee. Your spare clothes are at their usual place.”

“Fucking prick…” Kylo muttered as he skulked away, feeling Hux’s smirk burning through the back of his head. 

To add and insult to injury, on his way to the bathroom he passed Phanes with its perpetually half-lidded eyes. Just for a second, its smile appeared mocking in its serenity, like a person who just witnessed an intense row and then raved how pleasant the weather is. 

“… _fuck you, you braindead pile of carcasses_ …” he mumbled as quietly as possible. It might’ve been petty and childish, but it made him feel somewhat better. 

He showered as quickly as possible, dried off and grabbed a fresh set of clothes from a cabinet built into the white bathroom wall. T-shirt and sweatpants, both pure white, with the logo of First Order Laboratories embroidered within them.

The phlebotomy room was nearby. 

He threw himself in one of the chairs and just enjoyed the air conditioning and the promise of a meal that always followed these blood-drawing sessions. 

Hux appeared soon afterwards, a fresh shirt buttoned all the way up, his hair combed neatly. It always amazed Kylo how any person could live - _and thrive_ \- in a place like this, but at the he knew that Hux was much hardier than he appeared. 

The doctor smeared the crook of Kylo’s elbow with disinfectant, inserted the needle, and secured it with tape. Then he left without a word. 

And Kylo, he wanted to be unaffected, but that was nigh impossible. 

Armitage Hux was good-looking man. Under the veneer of hair gel, cologne, and that disagreeable personality of his, he possessed an effortless charm which enthralled anyone with eyes that saw. And besides - no matter how horrible a person he was, it was still him who saved Kylo from becoming a shambling monstrosity void of everything that makes one a human. 

He was lucky, in a way. 

By the time he had succumbed to the infection, Kylo was locked behind emergency shutters in an otherwise completely empty bookstore. There was no one there he could attack. No one’s meat to add to his bulk. He was grateful for this every time he saw an aberrant howling, chattering, or speaking in gibberish to the bodies of normal infectees they had felled. 

He remembered he had forced himself to come to work that day, though he felt worse than that one time he went down with a week-long stomach bug. The mall bookstore he worked at was being closed down, and he had to finish packing the last books and writing inventory lists. Odd sounds began to echo from the outside of the store, but he was too unwell to care. His head might as well have been filled with shards of broken glass with the way it hurt, his skin became weirdly sensitive to light, and his joints felt like they were covered by a layer of rust. 

He remembered that at one point he went to the back of the store to sit down for a little bit. 

After that, his memories started to turn strange. 

Everything became oddly malformed, the lights gained strange colours, and the geometric pattern of the carpet broke apart into segments that formed constantly shifting, Escheresque constructs. The glow of fluorescent light-tubes reacted with air and fell to the ground in large, felt-like swaths and strange sounds circled about like a flock of frightened birds. He tried to tell them to stop a couple of times, but he couldn’t get his jaw to work. 

His memories became gradually less and less coherent, until they resembled featureless black sludge. 

Then he woke up, tied to a bed and connected to various wires and tubes, and he felt every single needle, every single catheter. 

He shuddered at the memory and looked up. 

And saw Phanes. 

It stood at the door without moving. 

There was a healthy, rosy tint to its human parts, while the artificial were, as always, without a single blemish. Its long, snow-white hair was neatly parted and fell on its flat chest. As usual, it didn’t think to cover itself up. Kylo looked away from its limp member and was once again staggered by the pointlessness of giving a construct like this _a dick. And_ a vagina.

“ _HUX!_ ” He hollered. “ _That thing is here again! Put it away before I do so myself!_ ”

Hux took his sweet time, and when he entered, there was an unpleasant little smile playing on his lips. 

“What’s wrong, Kylo? Is Phanes throwing things at you or what?”

“It’s _here_. That’s enough. How do you know it’s not going to attack me?”

Hux rolled his eyes and slid his hand down the thing’s artificial deltoid.

“Phanes’s ‘ _behaviour_ ’, if you want to call it that, is dictated by only a few algorithms and even fewer programs. Phanes would never harm humans. Asimov’s laws and all. Just… try to think of them as a roomba - only much more beautiful.”

Kylo narrowed his eyes. 

“Why would a roomba need a cock and a cooch?”

Hux gave him a look of exasperation and shook his head as if in sadness. 

“So crude… I’m saying that _you_ should consider Phanes a roomba. Because _you_ obviously can’t appreciate beauty and are childish enough to consider genitals to be something shameful. I’m surprised you haven’t started to _giggle_ at the sight yet… Nevertheless-“ he continued, giving Kylo an imperious look that did strange thing to the man’s insides “Phanes is here for _my_ pleasure, not yours. With perfect proportions and a blend of female elegance and male power, Phanes pleases my eyes and helps me forget the stress of being amongst mutated monsters covered in pustules, sprouting new limbs and having more teeth than a barracuda farm. Any other questions?”

Kylo raised his hands in resignation. The left one was pulled back by the needle attached to it. 

“Nope.”

“Good. I need to run some tests on your blood now. Call me if you have a _real_ problem, and not just because you feel _bashful_. Phanes, terrace. Stay there and keep a look-out.”

With that, Kylo found himself alone again. 

And not a minute too soon. 

He only hoped Hux didn’t notice the heat he felt spread over his cheeks. That would’ve been difficult to explain.

He pulled his legs up and folded his hands on his stomach. 

That thought wouldn’t suddenly leave his mind. _That_ thought. 

What if Hux _really_ had Phanes for his pleasure? 

A series of unbidden images intruded his mind. 

Hux in the nude. Defiling himself on the member of his creation. 

Had something like that happened in here? 

Was Hux sprawled on the deck-chair in a wantonly supine position, his pale, naked form exposed to the oblivious Phanes which held his knees apart as it crowded the space in-between? Did the bioroid penetrate him with strokes pre-programmed to be deliberately slow, as rays of the sun lit up the stark whiteness of its resin parts, the same rays which dried Hux’s sweat and brushed against his nipples which were, without a doubt, cute and pink like cotton candy, a treat for any other mouth but the _roomba’s_?

Or did it happen inside, in Hux’s bedroom, or even better - in one of the labs? Was Hux on top of a hospital bed, on his elbows and knees, perhaps even tied with the very straps Kylo had woken up wearing? Had Phanes locked his narrow waist in its vice-like grip, jack-hammering him from behind until Hux was too lost in his pleasure to care about making noises like an animal in heat and soiling himself with his own seed as he vacantly drooled into his sheets? 

Kylo curled up. 

He wanted to slap himself. 

Thanks to his overactive imagination, the throbbing heat between his legs became too powerful to ignore. And he did _not_ want to relieve himself _in here_ of all places.

This was embarrassing. 

He tried to think of something decidedly unattractive. Like… cauliflowers. Yes. He didn’t like the way they looked. No, not at all. Their weird shape always reminded him equally of the Castle Bravo explosion and of human brains, and God knows he has seen more than his share of those. 

Once again, he had to wonder whether the P-Lyssa-25 virus was a man-made blight, or one of those punishments sent upon people for messing around with wild animals. Many were convinced it was the former, Kylo himself included, which was partially due to a notable lack of any official statements regarding that matter. Even Hux was pretty tight-lipped about it. Whenever Kylo asked, he was told not to waste his limited brainpower on questions he was not likely to solve anyway. Hux had often told him so with a haughty little smile on his lips and a cold light in his pale blue eyes. But those lips, those soft, rosy lips… how he-

He shook his head. 

Brains and Castle Bravo. Brains and Castle Bravo. 

“Hmm… the blood doesn’t seem to be flowing so well today…” Hux said right next to him, almost making Kylo jump out of his skin. 

Somehow he appeared in the room without Kylo noticing, and now he was tapping the blood-collecting unit with his index finger. 

“Could there be something amiss with the pressure?” he asked himself as if in thought, but when he turned around a couple of degrees, Kylo noticed his smile. That knowing smirk, which made Kylo blush all the way up to his hair-roots. First in embarrassment. Then in anger. 

“…that’s it. I’m done here.” He growled and tore the needle out of his arm, his rage numbing him to pain. 

“My, my. Let me at least dress this…”

He leaned in with a plaster he pulled out of the pocket of his lab-coat, and Kylo was surrounded by his scent, the familiar medley of cologne, some kind of shower gel, and the faint, almost imperceptible scent of a warm human body underneath it all. Kylo both blessed and cursed how accurate his senses became ever since he recovered from P-Lyssa.

“You know,” Hux said as he stepped away “you can relieve yourself in one of the test rooms. I’ve actually wanted to gather some semen samples to see whether P-Lyssa affects the sperm cells in any way. The studies in this matter are severely lacking, and-“

_SLAP_

The sound cut through the phlebotomy room like a knife. 

Kylo stepped back, his palm stinging. 

“You… you’re the worst. I thought we were the only two humans in this city, but I was wrong. To you, I’m nothing but an animal; an object to experiment on. Fuck you, Hux. I’m leaving. Have fun with those monstrosities you’ve created - after all, _birds of a feather_ , right? And give me my meds, unless you want to see _all your hard work go to waste._ ”

Hux, who had fallen to the ground, picked himself up again. His blank face was chalk-white with the exception of a vivid red palm-print on his cheek, and his pupils became black pinpricks in the sea of cold blue. He didn’t say anything when he turned around and walked out of the room, and he didn’t say anything when he returned with a jar full of the pills Kylo had to keep taking for at least eighteen more months. His hand wasn’t shaking as he handed them over, but Kylo could smell the sweat it was covered in. 

He snatched the jar away and stormed out of the room, out of the research section, out of the penthouse.

On his way out, he passed several bioroids. The six-armed one, the tall giants, the gardeners covered in pouch-like membranes filled with water; the few bioroids so alien-looking, he couldn’t even begin to guess at their function. 

And Phanes. 

Phanes who stood on the terrace. 

As Kylo left that place, he realized that even though he had hurt their master, none of the bioroids came to help. Even the giants were only programmed to move if he was infected. He could’ve beaten Hux to death or strangled him, and none of them would care. 

Not even Phanes.

Kylo pressed his lips together and left that place behind. 

The first thing he did once he returned to his current home twenty-eight stories below Hux’s floor was to change from the crisp and clean First Order whites to his black sweatpants and a crimson-patterned black t-shirt that smelled of machine grease, coffee, and _him_. He took his meds, opened a bottle of Pilsner Urquell and gulped it all down within the span of a minute, hoping a nice cold beer would take the edge off his fouled mood. 

Grabbing two more bottles, he went out on his huge balcony, a big part of which was covered with inflatable mattresses, blankets, and many, many cushions. He sat down in his makeshift nest and sipping from the bottle, he gazed at the city down below, at its off-colour ruins. 

Funny, how the world moved. 

Back then, this place of his would’ve been ridiculously out of his league. 

He had lived in a small but comfy apartment in what was colloquially known as The Dumps. Strangers have uttered this name with contempt and scorn, but locals used it with a measure of wry amusement in their voice. It was supposed to be a dangerous part or the town, but in all his years living there, Kylo has never seen anything worse than a domestic row or a drunk falling badly and hitting his head on a curb. 

His living conditions there weren’t exactly ideal, and he often took odd jobs in order to support himself, but he had wonderful neighbours, and the unprompted trust they have shown him did wonders for easing that horrible pressure which had plagued most of his teenage years. To them, who knew nothing of his origins, he was just a quiet, hard-working fellow who they could ask anything from fixing their plumbing to babysitting their kids. In return, they had taught him how to make cannoli straight out of heaven, where to buy the tastiest hot dogs and which bar stays open way after its closing time. 

All of that was gone now. 

Those kindly people have all died, if they were lucky. 

Only Hux and he remained. 

He wasn’t even sure whether his parents were still alive. He assumed they were. After all, his mother was a senator, father a famous racer… people like that were well protected, right? 

He still remembered the relief he had felt when Hux filled him in of the state of the world. Having grown up on horror and splatter movies, he was certain this was a world-wide pandemic, until the good doctor corrected him, telling him about the quarantine zone and its many, _many_ protective measures whose deadliness would put the Berlin Wall to shame.

Back then, the city was a veritable hell on earth. 

Streets were teeming with the infected - _zombies_ , as everyone called them much to Hux’s vexation, and every night was filled with screams of the dying and hyena-like howls of their butchers. But though things have calmed down since then, it didn’t mean the danger was gone. On the contrary. 

Unlike in horror movies, the infected attacked one-another. Victors gorged themselves on remains of losers, claiming their bodymass for their own. The degree of their grotesqueness rose in direct relation to their body-count. During the last couple of weeks, Kylo had seen some truly horrifying monstrosities, and on one or two occasions he even had to use the anti-materiel ZVI Falcon rifle Hux had procured from god knows where to take care of the trouble. 

Hux…

Kylo bit the inside of his lip. 

He knew he shouldn’t’ve lost his temper like that, but that man was just so-…

He sipped at his beer and reclined onto his back, conscious of the pressure below his waist. It never really went away, ever since he imagined those scenes, but only now was he comfortable enough to do something about it. 

He shimmied out of his sweatpants and underwear, took another gulp of the beer and slid his palm up and down his shaft, sighing at how good it felt. So good… It felt good to know the boundaries of one’s body, to know they weren’t likely to shift or collapse in any way. 

He held his breath and imagined Hux again, spread out on a hospital bed as if on an altar. His legs were held open by the giants, the multi-armed bioroid restrained his wrists, and Phanes penetrated him with his smooth resin cock in a metronome-steady rhythm. It was like watching a ritual, a sacred ceremony. Kylo had pleasured himself to this scene before, but today, under the influence of his anger, he made it change. 

Those non-sentient, pre-programmed bioroids - he imagined himself shoving them out of the way, kicking them to the ground and stomping them to dust, destroying them in order to take their place. He then took everything that was offered. He tasted the sweat on that pale column of a throat, caressed pebbled nipples with his lips and tongue, probed at the tightness of the entrance, which now had to accommodate a girth and length far beyond that of Phanes. The Hux in his mind accepted all of this with an arch to his spine that wasn’t there before, with moans reaching a new, satisfyingly high pitch.

Kylo imagined biting hard into the juncture of Hux’s shoulder as he came inside, and with the taste of imaginary blood and sweat on his tongue, he found his release in the real world as well. 

It took him a while to recover from this fantasy. 

He finished the second beer and started with a third, fully intent on summoning that pleasurable fatigue which had always sapped his dark thoughts away. And he succeeded. 

Sweet slumber claimed him as the sun travelled across the sky. He was tired. Hux took quite a lot of his blood, and then there was the issue of him not eating any breakfast. 

Soon after the sundown, his sleep was interrupted by the low-pitched calls of aberrants looking for prey deep down below. 

The night was warm, the air humid. A storm would come soon, he realized. 

There were no hurricane warnings anymore, he realized next. 

He rolled over on his side and pulled the blankets over his head. It had been a mistake, to think of Hux as he had pleasured himself. He understood as much now. He didn’t want to think about that man, about how white his face went, about the scars on his back. Damn that man and his blatant disregard for morality. 

Damn this whole world.


	2. Hux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The higher the climb, the harder the fall.

Hux put another batch of test-tubes inside the climatic chamber to mature, took the one he had removed and grabbed sample No.26f. He undid the stopper, plunged a pipette in the colourless liquid, and deposited several drops onto a glass slide. Next he put a gas mask on just to be on the safe side, reached inside a different climatic chamber for a tube marked with a neon pink mark and added a tiny droplet onto the 26f sample using a borosilicate glass micropipette. The slide was then sealed into a small chamber under the lens of a huge microscope, which was bulky enough to almost reach the ceiling, and both pipettes were locked in the UV chamber for sterilisation.

Finally, he removed the gas mask, took a sip of his coffee and leaned over the eyepieces. 

He waited, observed and wrote down his observations. 

Then he exposed the sample to a bundle of rays of a short wavelength. 

He waited, observed and wrote down his observations. 

He adjusted the wavelength and with his finger barely brushing against the dial, he raised the frequency.

He waited, observed, wrote down his observations. 

Another adjustment. 

He took a sip of his coffee. Observed the behaviour of infected cells, wrote down his observation. 

The process was repeated again and again, until the cells fell apart. 

He grabbed his mug, but it was empty. As was the kettle on the table. 

“Phanes!” he called. “Coffee!”

The bioroid arrived just as he raised the frequency to completely sterilize the slide and reached for sample 27f to start all over again. 

Phanes hovered around him, silent and beautiful like a statue. A statue which, nevertheless, breathed under its mask; which needed sustenance to stay alive. Phanes didn’t eat real food. None of the bioroids did. They thrived on carefully measured doses of electricity and nutrient solution. Thanks to that, the excretion was kept to a minimum. No solids, only a minimum of urine. And sweat. And since their programming linked excretion to expurgation, his bioroids were always squeaky clean and pure. 

He smiled at Phanes and couldn’t help but slide his hand up and down their arm. The flexor pollicis longus and the flexor digitorum profundus muscles were real human flesh covered in real human skin (albeit skin from a different person with a better complexion), but their sinews and the bones underneath were artificial. So was the elbow and the wrist. Hux rubbed lovingly the pad of his thumb against the smooth surface of the exposed ellipsoid joint made of black polypropylene and slid it down the stark white back of Phanes’s hand. So gorgeous. So pure. 

Everything inside the room was pure. 

There was not a smidgeon of dirt anywhere in Hux’s quarters. Just untainted, scintillating white, refreshing electric blue, and calming hues of bright green. Just like Phanes, everything was smooth and clean and streamlined. A wonderful environment for conducting research. It uplifted one’s heart, amplified one’s scientific spirit. 

In these rooms, there was no place for dirt. 

No one in their right mind would ever imagine that things like narrow closets with walls covered in damp-swollen, crumbling plaster marred by thick coats of black mould and old, dusty cobwebs belonged in the same world as these wonderful, state-of-the-art labs. Bare, flickering light-bulbs had no place in here. Neither had bugs and rats and horrible dark stains looking simultaneously like a person and an old, gnarled tree. And the only blood allowed to be spilled was meant for research purposes.

The shadow of _that place_ somewhat marred Hux’s sense of gratification. 

It was as if a dark cloud had passed over the sun. The flashback was so unexpectedly strong, he had to bury his face in his hands. Phanes wandered away. Everything was quiet. His breath began to shorten. Was it plaster and mould he could smell? Was it bugs, blood, and stale urine? Was it coming out of his hands? Had he been contaminated? 

His fist hit the table so hard, it made the slides rattle and his notebook fall off. He looked at it, looked at the pages covered in his small, neat handwriting, and slowly but surely his breathing calmed down. 

These labs were his labs. Labs, where even the floor was spotless enough to eat from. 

And the only ones around were those he had created himself.

He touched his cheek. The handprint was gone, but the echo of the sting remained. It called forth what he had locked away. What remained locked away in tight, narrow spaces of the corners of his mind for so long, it became a jumbled, nonsensical mess. He had pretended there was nothing there to see for a very long time, and this strategy usually worked, but now those memories were disturbed - and were looking his way. 

His face blanched.

He jumped up and rushed to the bathroom, where he threw his lab coat off. Turning the water on, he held his hands under a contactless soap dispenser, scrubbed them with a brush and rinsed the suds away. He repeated the process, this time with hot water, and moved to the disinfectant station. Only once his skin stared to feel all tight and smooth did he release the breath he had been holding the entire time. He held his hands to his nose. They smelled like lemongrass and myrtle. He nodded in approval. The pressure slowly left his chest, and once Samsa brought him a fresh lab coat, holding it carefully in two of his hands while the other four scuttled across the floor, he felt ready to return to his work.

Sample 69n. 

Hux took his glasses off, placed them next to his notebook and rubbed his eyes. 

According to the clock, it was now two days later. He had slept maybe five hours in total, but that didn’t matter. This research was important and besides - there were more than enough stimulants around to keep him up and alert. 

If only there was some progress. 

Each sample behaved slightly differently under various wavelengths, but even the most promising ones didn’t make the cut. When exposed to the virus, the partially resistant cells either destroyed it much too quickly, or, when another dose of P-Lyssa was added, they started to mutate anew. 

He massaged the bridge of his nose. 

Even as a research subject, Ren was too volatile. 

He scowled at the _‘n’_ set of samples and tapped his fingers against the desk. Infuriating man. He didn’t need him. He had drawn enough of his blood. 

One particular cooling cabinet held the samples of Ren. His blood, his saliva swabs, urine, cerebrospinal liquid, hair strands, nail clippings… there were even deep-frozen tissue samples from back then, when he had the man tied to a hospital bed. He gave the cabinet a fond look, remembering simpler times, days he had spent in excitement, observing his subject’s mind get clearer and clearer as his lesions disappeared. He only wished he had the opportunity to add another type of sample to his collection, but when his mind strayed towards _the method of collecting_ , he quickly looked away. 

He chided his mind for harbouring those stupid thoughts. 

It was nothing but desperation speaking. Ren was, after all, the only other person in this quarantine zone. But heavens be damned if Armitage Hux was going to fall for that one. A pragmatic masturbation twice a week was all that was needed to keep those urges in check. He was not going to let _anyone_ see his vulnerability and the softness of his body unavoidably revealed by the state of undress. No need to make himself a target. And as for the desire to be held, to… _cuddle_ …

Hux brought his mug down a little too hard, and drops of tepid tea splashed on the table. 

He glared at the cooling cabinet. 

“Damn you, Ren.” 

But then, an idea sparked within his mind. 

He quickly grabbed his blood-drawing kit, rolled his sleeve up, disinfected the crook of his elbow and jabbed the needle in without any regard for comfort. 

Making a solution of desirable concentration took him under fifteen minutes. He withdrew several millilitres, mixed them with sample 70n, dropped the liquid onto a fresh slide, added P-Lyssa, and locked the slide under the microscope. Pen in his hand, he then leaned over the eye-pieces and observed the results. 

P-Lyssa first attacked the more convenient target - him - but then Ren’s cells, diluted and slowed down by the presence of Hux’s blood, besieged the virus.

What followed was nothing short of a _most wonderful transformation_. He observed one of the virus-damaged cells undergo mitosis - and its result was a pair slightly less-damaged ones. He blinked, unsure whether he had really seen what he just saw, or if it was just wishful thinking or the result of sleep deprivation. Luckily, his microscope was recording everything he observed. He returned the footage to that one particular spot and watched it again. And again. And again. 

He sank into his chair and sat there for a while without moving a single finger. Once he finally made himself _believe_ , he jumped up and strode to the kitchen, where he poured himself a glass of fifty years old whisky. Dropping a cube of ice in the dark amber liquid, he went out on the terrace and stopped in front of the balustrade. 

The city - decayed, unsightly, and malodorous - was sprawling at his feet like an over-ripe fruit which had fallen from its branch. Somewhere on its western outskirts, in a suburb filled with many ostentatious but utterly uninspired villas, there used to be one particular house filled with shadows. Soon after the entire city had been walled off and left to its own devices, this house burned to the ground under mysterious circumstances, and though its shadow still haunted and plagued, fire gave it that flat pallor of a faded photography. 

The house, the suburb itself was too distant and had too low a profile to be physically seen, but Hux’s eyes were fixed on it nevertheless. He sent it a smile. A beautiful, radiant smile filled with the sweetness of oleanders and angel’s trumpets. His eyes shone as he sipped his expensive whisky he had procured soon after the start of the quarantine. 

He was the saviour of the world. 

He, whom others used to call _useless, pathetic_ , and _sick_. If they called him anything at all that is, for most just looked away when they saw him coming. The best way to deal with bruises and cuts was, after all, to ignore them. It made everything easier, more palatable. 

The sky above his head became crowded with clouds. Giving it a cursory glance, he turned around and went back inside, his malicious thoughts mellowed out with the help of alcohol. 

The next task on his list was almost as glorious as discovering the cure. 

He sat down in his study, grabbed his telephone and dialled a number. 

The secretary of First Order Laboratories’ HQ patched him through to Mr. Snoke, and Hux could hardly suppress his giddiness as he told his superior of his discovery. Finally, he’d get the recognition he deserved. He finished his report, and-

“…I see. Unfortunately, I have bad news for you, Doctor Hux.” Snoke said in his usual, dispassionate tone. “Your research is no longer needed.”

“I beg your pardon?” Hux replied, smile frozen on his lips.

“I don’t think I need to repeat myself, Doctor Hux.” 

“But it was a success. Not only is the virus overwhelmed, the afflicted tissue gradually returns to its previous state.”

“Remarkable. Nevertheless, there have been severe budget cuts following some… unfortunate information leaks. I am letting go of most of the bioengineering section. Our laboratories will be maintained by skeleton staff, and this _only_ applies to the laboratories outside of the quarantine zones.”

“H-how… b-but… no, it was a success. We have a cure.” Hux stammered. 

“Yes, and you have my congratulations. But a general consensus was met. Quarantine zones are being abandoned. They will remain inaccessible for thirty years, after which they will be levelled with the ground.”

Hux felt so weak, he struggled to keep his hold on the phone. His hands were numb. His lips as well. 

“…why…” he whispered. 

“Many reasons. You are undeniably a brilliant scientist, so you deserve to know the truth. 

“Currently, the number of people held in all twenty nine quarantine zones is around one point seven billion, so the problem of overpopulation will be partially solved. City dwellers are also much more easily replaceable than farmers. Then there are insurances placed on each building, each company... In short, letting all of you go is in this world’s best interest. 

“You did well, Doctor Hux. I commend you for not only surviving this long, but continuing with your research. You truly have a scientist’s spirit. But I’m cutting you off. In fact, as we speak, I’m signing your death certificate. Don’t take it personally. You were born at the wrong time, at the wrong place. I know you are a proud creature, so I would recommend you to take your service weapon and end yourself while you still hold onto the vestiges of your glory.”

“ _No! No, let me at least send the results and-_ “

“Your results are not needed. Your cure is not needed. You are not needed. Farewell, doctor.”

Hux screamed something else, but the line went dead. 

He rushed to the server station. His internet connection was severed. No matter how many times he tried to change his IP address or how many networks he tried to connect to. 

He, who had sought solitude for his entire life, now found himself fearing it for the very first time. 

It was not supposed to be like this. He discovered the cure. He was a saviour. He was supposed to be lauded.

He…

He was not some dirty kid locked up and abandoned in a dirty old basement. 

That did not happen. 

That was a lie. 

There had been no police breaking in through the door. He hadn’t been carried out on a stretcher. He hadn’t spent the next several days connected to IV drips… only to be returned back home after a week, as father made it look like he had locked himself in by his own stupidity. 

Except, except…

He felt just like then. Sequestered. Locked. Abandoned. 

He stared at the clusters of servers. Red and green diodes flashed every few seconds, fans ran cool, air-conditioned breeze through the system. There was no evident change. Machines didn’t care if everything they had done turned out to be for naught. They maintained their operations until they shut down, for one reason or another. 

Hux had seen himself as a biological machine. Now he felt the ridiculousness of such notion. He wanted to live. He wanted some _bloody_ recognition. He wanted to see new sceneries, taste new foods. He wanted to experience. He wanted to be exposed to things. He… he wanted Kylo to return. 

It was stupid. 

Utterly unreasonable, and yet... 

He rushed to the console in his study and logged onto the surveillance network in hopes of finding him, so he could tell the dumb oaf with no appreciation for beauty that they were screwed, that they might as well put a bullet through their heads. Then he wanted to laugh at the expression Ren would make, whatever it would be. Disbelief, anger, hate - he didn’t care. But no matter how quickly he switched between various cameras, Ren was nowhere to be found.

_‘BANG!’_

Hux hit the console with his fists. A couple of pens fell to the floor with a clatter. He could no longer tell his emotions apart. They became a featureless jumble. A pressure that sought relief. Like a boogieman from fairy-tales, he got up and pushed the chair away. His back was hunched. His face was much too pale and the shadows encircling his eyes too deep. Stepping away from the console, he grabbed the chair and flung it across the room with all his might. It shattered against the wall, showering Phanes’s bare legs with splinters. 

The whisky was still there, on the kitchen counter. 

He grabbed the bottle by the neck. There was no need to bother with a glass. His feet led him outside onto the terrace, where it had started to rain. He wished the whole world was nothing but a set made of newspaper, so the rain would soak right through it and slowly wash it away into the sewers, where it belonged. He sat down in front of the balustrade, crossed his legs and observed the city. The ruined, abandoned, useless, pointless city. 

Perhaps he himself was nothing but a delusion of a ruined, abandoned, useless, pointless boy-child with propensity for grandiose dreaming and breaks from reality. 

He took another swing from the bottle and bit his lip. 

He always suspected he’d be abandoned again. Only… only it was not supposed to be this sudden. 

His chin shook. 

He took another gulp and pulled his knees up to his chest. No one would help him. He had always known as much. The bottle was raised again. Red-hot heat flowed into his stomach. Perhaps the world was so rotten, it did not deserve to get the cure. Or any cure. If the world was rotten enough to keep on betraying him and treating him like dirt no matter how hard he tried to achieve anything, perhaps he ought to do the exact opposite and develop a virus with even higher infectiousness and mortality than P-Lyssa-25, a virus to turn the entire population of Earth into a singularity, into a mass of flesh with shared thoughts and him as a nexus of hate within. Was there a punishment worse than that? Let the treacherous, selfish people who preferred to look the other way know how much contempt he had for them.

The bottle was now empty. He got up and went to grab another, slipping a couple of times on wet patches of the terrace floor. None of his bioroids were anywhere in sight. The penthouse was silent, but it was that awkward type of silence following an assured success turning into a grandiose waste of time. 

He woke up in the bathroom, which was just fine, as the storm that brewed in his stomach left him just enough time to wrap his arms around the porcelain god, lift its seat and pray. This must’ve happened several times already, as he threw up nothing but some watery stomach fluids, and when he finished, instead of relief he only got stomach cramps and burning sensation in his throat. 

Once he was fine, or rather _empty_ enough to flush the toilet, he pulled himself up to his feet and, holding onto the sink, fought a sudden bout of light-headedness. Ice-cold water helped a little. First he washed his mouth out to rid it of at least a fraction of the horrible aftertaste, then he drank several long gulps to rehydrate his system. 

He managed to hold the water down for exactly one minute and twenty-six seconds. 

In the end, it took fourteen hours of sleep, two litres of tonic water, a couple of prescription painkillers, and carefully rationed plain toast to cure him of the worst, and even then he felt like his head was filled by lead pellets and broken glass. 

The rain kept steadily pattering against the windows as he lay curled up on his bed, wondering who he actually was.

He could no longer pretend he was a brilliant, untouchable, pure human being, but neither was he a pitiful, smelly, animal-like creature locked behind a sturdy door to be kept out of sight and out of mind. 

Over the time, he began to understand what he had to do next, and no, it had nothing to do with his rage-fuelled wish to create a new supervirus. 

It was simple, really. He would continue with his research, albeit with some changes. A more radical step was needed in order to make his success truly visible and impossible to ignore, and for that he had to obtain the ultimate sample.

And he would do so without involving Ren. 

There were two reasons why he monitored Ren so often. Firstly, it was because he just liked to observe the man. He had a wonderful physique, and his unusual, not quite symmetric features made him look uncommonly handsome. He knew Ren retained a certain level of softness and compassion where he himself was hard and embittered, and what had started as a gleeful anticipation of Ren’s inevitable breakdown caused by these ‘weaknesses’ turned gradually into a genuine interest. 

Secondly, he had to subtly steer Ren away from one particular place. The General Hospital. Hux’s next destination. The aberrant living there was far beyond Ren’s abilities. Hux called it strictly ‘the GHC’, or the General Hospital Creature, even though he knew its identity - or at least the initial one. Now he would meet it again, because for the first time in about four months, he intended to go out on a hunt. 

He stripped, took a cold shower and waited for blasts of warm air to dry him off. Dressed in his briefs and a sleeveless shirt, he then went to his makeshift armoury and pulled a jumpsuit out of the closet. It was made of kevlar and carbon fibres, and it fitted him like a glove. On top of that he put a tactical vest and armed himself with a high-calibre gun loaded with hollow-point bullets and, more importantly, an anti-material rifle loaded with HEIAP ammunition. 

There was a secret that no one particularly cared about. 

Though this was a sealed quarantine zone, it was still held under close observation. Eyes much farther up the pecking order than Snoke could ever hope to be turned their attention to this place once in a while. The idea was - if his cure would take care of GHC one day, then it wouldn’t matter whether Snoke had cut him off or not. _Someone_ would notice. He would be extracted. Saved. And if not, if he would fail, or if the GHC would attempt to absorb him the way it had all of the patients and most of the staff… well, there were some cyanide capsules in his suit as well. 

Anything was better than a pointless life concluded by an orbital bombardment. 

As he was about to leave his penthouse, he looked in the direction of the comm room. His determination faltered, but only for a moment. He would face this situation the way he faced any other tight spot in his life - alone. 

The General Hospital was not too far away. It was a fairly new, deceptively clean looking building. On the way there, Hux encountered and took care of three infected and one C-type aberrant. It was a refreshing feeling, to put those revolting creatures down with his own two hands. He had almost forgotten how good it felt. Unlike Kylo, he saw the aberrants and infected alike as the people they used to be. As careless, stupid idiots who had lived in their little bubbles of happiness, completely unprepared for the hell which broke loose. He remembered watching people like this from the school bus during his boyhood years. People who smiled as they held hands, people who told their children they were proud of them, people who met up with relatives for Christmas or Easter. As he had watched them, it always felt like they lived on a completely separate plane of existence. Decent, happy people, who never learned how to deal with tragedy.

The door to the lobby opened without any trouble. Both wings retained their panes of thick glass, and the interior beyond that was almost spotless. From what he had gathered during his observations, he knew that the infected eschewed the hospital. There was just some minor disorder in the hallways. An overturned wheelchair, scattered charts, broken clipboard. 

Two hallways later he would arrive at the atrium. 

It used to house a rather lovely, surprisingly spacious garden with magnolia trees and arrangements of mossy rocks, tufts of heather, and creeping periwinkle. On the other side of the atrium, there was the L-shaped building for inpatients. Further behind was the staff dormitory. That’s where he would’ve lived, if it wasn’t for his contract with First Order Laboratories. His colleagues knew and hated him for that, though when facing him, they were naturally all smiles and politeness. Hux found their hate and its oft unexpected manifestations rather fascinating.

Ostracizing. 

Gossip. 

Rude messages scribbled on toilet doors. 

Forgotten party invitations. 

Simpletons, all of them. If only they knew, if only they could see the nature of his personal research. He would’ve loved to see their reactions. 

Officially, he had been hired as assistant neurologist, but the scope of his research was _so much broader_ …Take Phanes, for example. Phanes had been completed from seventy percent by the time P-Lyssa took over. If the pandemic had any effect on his research at all, it speeded it up, for he didn’t have to worry about being discovered anymore.

Nevertheless, he was never grateful for it. 

Though the society was stupid, tedious, and ignorant, it was the world he was used to, the world he learned how to navigate in. 

He was about to reach the end of the hallway. 

Unlike in the lobby, the elements left their mark here. Formerly pristine white walls were now oddly blotchy and covered by a network of lightning-like cracks, and the floor was dusted by flakes of peeled off plaster. Framed photos of sunlit meadows and calm oceans, which used to adorn the corridor, lay all broken on the ground for some reason. Perhaps some frustrated patient or a despairing doctor… 

Such baseless shows of aggression were nothing new to Hux. 

He could clearly remember the chaos and sheer desolation which had flooded the streets of the city once it became clear that the government was not going to save them, that it decided to let them rot instead. At that time, there was still quite a number of survivors trying to scrape through their days, and Hux, who had hacked into the surveillance system, witnessed thousand and one atrocities perpetrated by those desperate, frightened people.

He smirked to himself. Some things never change. 

He stopped, made sure it was safe, and then did one last check, making sure his rifle wouldn’t jam and that he wouldn’t run out of bullets. As he counted them, he leaned against the wall. 

The wall gave in, pliant like leather.

Startled, he put his hand against its surface to regain his balance. 

It was _warm_. 

Alarm bells rang inside his head. He jumped away and spun around, and then he finally _saw_. 

Hux finally stopped running once he reached the cover of one of the condenser units up on the roof. 

He slowly caught his breath, but his heart was still hammering against his ribcage like a panicking bird. It was impossible. Inconceivable. The rifle shook in his hands. What now? He couldn’t stay on the roof, wasn’t even sure it _was_ a roof; but neither could he return the way he came. 

Damn Snoke. It was all because of him, _all because of him!_ He must’ve _seen_ , with all those satellite feeds he had at his disposal. 

Then again, Hux could’ve seen as well, had he aimed some of his cameras at the hospital often enough. But he avoided that. Wanted to pretend it did not exist. The hospital held _so many_ bad memories, so much resentment, disease, rage, and fear. He had tried to concentrate on his research and purge all distractions from his mind, yet that damnable place was still stuck at the back of it, all those months. 

Up until Ren had arrived, that is. Ren’s presence changed everything. 

So _of course_ he’d be confronted with the reality of the General Hospital, now that he pushed Ren away. 

He risked a quick glance around. 

The rooftop seemed empty, but… was the condenser unit _really_ a condenser unit? And the walls of the entrance - were they what they appeared to be? 

He remembered the ground floor wall he had leaned against. The way it gave in. Its feverish warmth. The softness. The veins he initially mistook for cracks. It was the GHC. As soon as he had realized that, its flesh clad in leper-white skin started to heave and undulate. In some places, it created new walls which cut off pre-existing hallways. In others, it melted and formed new corridors, new doorways, new windows with thin, veiny membranes in lieu of glass. 

Hux shuddered and tried to remember where the fire escape ladder was. 

He was supposed to know this. After all, he used to come up here quite often - whenever he needed a moment or two someplace quiet. 

A sudden memory emerged within his mind. There used to be planters with cedars here, and boxes of geranium and heather. His eyes started to travel. He found one of the boxes right next to his ankle. Completely empty. With nothing but barely visible traces of soil remaining. As if it had been _licked_ clean. 

His head spun. 

The hangover-induced headache returned with a vengeance. 

Unwilling to look even a second longer at that accursed place, he gazed up at the sky, but… could he believe it? Didn’t those heavy clouds look _suspiciously_ like grey matter? And what drizzled out of them, what if it was a rain of leukocytes? What if the world became diseased enough for its status quo to change and for him to become the foreign body in its insane amalgamation? 

He bit the inside of his lip. 

He had to pull himself together. 

The ladder.

Yes. 

He was leaning against the vent of one of the condenser units. That meant the rooftop exit was also behind his back. The ladder was, therefore, to his left. Ten steps away from the last condenser. Twenty four steps from where he stood. 

The rifle in his hands was still shaking. 

Twenty four steps. That sounded easy. He just had to walk quietly, breathe naturally. Conquer his fear as he had done numerous times in the past. ( _Don’t look up. Don’t look around. Just listen. Breathe. Relax shoulders. Wipe forehead so the droplets of water mixed with sweat won’t fall into your eyes. The rifle. Concentrate on the rifle. Yes. Weapon. Means of self-defence. Means of reckoning. Firm. Hard. Heavy._ ) The image of Ren flashed in front of his mind’s eye. He clutched his weapon even tighter. ( _Not now. Not now._ )

It was eerie, how easily he fell back into that mindset. 

( _Not now. Now the right foot. Now the left. Right foot. Left foot. If you walk with a quiet tread, you won’t be noticed. If you’re not noticed, you won’t be chided. He’ll forget about you. They won’t see you. If they won’t see you, they won’t make fun of you. If they won’t make fun of you, he won’t beat you. He won’t tell you you embarrass him in front of them. The rest that follows won’t follow. He won’t cuss. He won’t use those horrible profanities. How can an adult man spew bile that foul anyway?_ ) 

Twenty steps. 

The drizzle turned into a much heavier rain. Visibility was diminished. And he was starting to get wet. How he hated the sensation of wet clothes against his skin. He would get dirty. He would stink.

Fifteen steps. 

Every time things seemed too good to be true, something happened; or rather, _he_ made something happen. He always prided himself on his sharp intellect and self-control, but when something truly good came his way, he immediately pushed it away like the meanest fool. 

Eleven steps. 

Like when he teased Ren back in the phlebotomy room. Ren, who was visibly aroused - and visibly ashamed of it. He had never seen an aroused man on his own two eyes, not counting all those tragic pre-mortem erections. He had thought visibly aroused people were pathetic in their neediness, but Ren was just… he was so…

And so he messed up again. 

He had to. 

The moment he’d allow good things too close to his skin, he’d end up used, ridiculed, abandoned. 

Ren won’t return. And it was better that way. 

Seven steps. 

The rain. 

Made such an odd noise. 

Hux froze. His brows knitted. No. It was just the familiar pitter-patter. 

But… 

He closed his eyes. There was something else hiding beneath the white noise of the rain. A strange wet sound, as if someone was smacking their lips. Pulling the rifle close to his chest, he turned around-

-and saw a long slit run through the surface of the roof to his right. 

Both sides of the gash pulled apart in a number of wetly glistening folds, and something filled the void in between. It was an eye. An eye with a diameter of more than two metres. Its bluish-green iris flickered there and back until it focused on Hux. The pupil dilated. And the slit, the slit continued to grow. Its numerous folds all bunched up on one side and shot out towards the sky, pressing against one another, twisting, turning into a thick pillar of flesh, a worm-like tongue which arched through the air only to fall back on the wet concrete with a disgusting slap. Then it started to flicker around, tasting the ground, the condenser units, the air. Hux quickly jumped out of its reach, sickened to his stomach by this sight. The giant pupil contracted and some two dozens of smaller slits opened around it, all forming into gaping, grinning mouths with pallid, plump lips. 

“ _AAHHHRMEEETIIIIIIIDGE, COOOME TOOOO PAAAAPPAAAH!!!_ ” they bayed in unison, their voices inhumanly deep. 

“Go to hell!” Hux yelled back, his intent to collect samples completely forgotten. 

“ _FEED MEEEE! FEEED MEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! IT EEESSSS YOOUUUURRR DYUUUUTEEEEHHH, YYOOOUUU FIIILIIIAAAL DUUUTEEEYYYHH, YOUUU SSSOFT LITTLEE CUUUUNT! EET EEEES YOUR DYUUTEEEEH TOO FEEEED MEEEE YOUR SOOOFT, SQUISSHHHYYY GUUUTS! FEEEED YOOUURRR PAAAPAAAH!!!_ ”

Something inside of him snapped. He grabbed his rifle and fired. But instead of tearing chunks of flesh from the mutating beast, half of the entire roof burst into a number of starfish-like limbs arranged in concentric rings, each covered by myriads of pseudopodia and long black hairs. Hux was beyond caring. Once the first magazine was empty, he took cover to reload his rifle. 

He jumped out from behind the condenser unit to aim-

And he was hit. 

A thin feeler, flash of hot pain, penetrated both his vest and the jumpsuit underneath and went thought his chest, right under the left clavicle. That was unimportant. He only concentrated on that vile eye. He needed to destroy it. Nothing else mattered. Even if he would die, as long as he blinded it, as long as he made it weep its own sclera, he knew he’d die happy. 

The tentacle-tongue appeared again and swung in his direction. He emptied his magazine into it. Eight bullets. That’s all that was left. The tentacle didn’t budge. It descended onto him, its ends fraying into dozens of wiggling fingers. He rolled away at the very last second, grunting with pain. The rifle was useless, so he threw it away. His instincts had him grab his combat knife instead of the gun. The knife he never used. He plunged it in the tentacle and slit it open. 

“ _HOOWWW DAAAARREEE YYOOOUUUU!!!_ “ The mouths bellowed, sending huge drops of murky spittle flying everywhere. “ _III’VE RAISED YOUUUU!!! I’VE FFFEEED YOOOUUU! FILLTHEEEYYY IINGRAAATE!_ ”

Hux wanted to snap something back, but just like on so many occasions in the past, his mind wouldn’t let him. It labelled any accusations against his father as treason and pointed out fact after fact excusing Brendol’s behaviour. As a single parent, father had it too hard. Armitage used to be too sickly, and hospital bills were quite a burden on the limited family budget. He was too thin, too frail to play any sports. Father went out into pubs with friends and stayed there until wee hours of morning because he needed to interact with his peers. To have fun. Because Armitage was the very opposite of fun. He was a boring, gloomy kid. Awkward and dull. No one would ever love him. No one would-

His thoughts were interrupted by a meaty tentacle hitting him straight across the stomach.

He was tossed against a wall, the impact winding him, and collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath. He lashed out blindly with his knife. There was a roar. He was showered with blood and something thick. 

He hated it.

Hated everything, himself included. 

He was too weak. Too dull. The door wouldn’t break, no matter how hard he pounded against it. Everyone watched. Father closed his huge hand around his neck and hissed something terrible into his ear. Something that made the others laugh. Someone pulled him away. Pushed him into a dark room. He had fought tooth and nail. There was blood. There was a blow. There was darkness. Then the white ceiling of a hospital and stitches. 

And silence.

And solitude. 

He slashed around with his knife and hit some hot, pulsating mass. Something clamped itself around his shoulder and flung him away like a ragdoll. He hit one of the condenser units and landed hard on the ground, unable to get up. Something in his leg…

Another feeler hit him across the back, hard as a rod of iron. He opened his mouth. Nothing came out. He couldn’t scream. He never screamed. Only in his mind. 

And now-

A new tentacle swung through the air. It was a thick one. It would crush his head like a watermelon. 

Hux was in no condition to fight it off. 

He laughed. 

As the tentacle approached, its surface rippled and creased, and dozens of vertical mouths appeared, opening and closing, smacking their meaty lips, licking their small, pointy teeth with something that looked more like a shell-less crab rather than tongue.

“ _MMMM, TAAASTTTEEEYYY…_ ” the GHC chuckled and whatever colour left in Hux’s face drained away. “ _COOOMMEEE IIINNSIIIIDE PAAAAPAAAAAHHHH!_ ” The thing bellowed, sounding like a rabid dog, a bull running amuck, like a roaring boar. 

The tentacle made an almost graceful arc through the air, it descended, and-

Burst apart in an explosion of reddish-grey mist.


	3. After the rain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3, with another wonderful picture done by [star](https://starkickback.tumblr.com/)

Kylo couldn’t believe what he was seeing. No infected, no aberrant could’ve gotten that big. The… _thing_ the entire main building of the General Hospital gradually morphed into was simply beyond comprehension. It slowly became a sort of a hive, a nest, two concentric rings of pillar-like fleshy appendages with pinkish grey skin strangely iridescent in the falling rain. The appendages of the larger ring rose to the height of a three storey building. They were slightly curved and tapered at the end, and when they moved, they crushed asphalt into huge, floe-like blocks and left deep, wide trenches in the ground.

And at the centre of this insanity was a tiny little figure. 

A figure with coppery hair grown dull from the rain. 

Kylo had noticed him leaving the building, and so he followed, curious to see what Hux was up to. Ever since he became himself again, he had never seen the man leave his penthouse apartment. 

Whatever he had expected, this was on a whole new level. 

Kylo bit his lip. 

It was obvious Hux was in deep trouble. 

He was considering his choices, but then the thing actually spoke, spoke loud enough even for Kylo to hear. And he felt his jaw drop. 

Did it just say _‘Armitage, come to papa’_?

Hux opened fire at the thing, and moments later he was hit. Compared to the other appendages, the feeler that hit him was positively hair-like, but it went right through his body. 

Kylo gritted his teeth and broke into run. Hux was an arrogant bastard with no empathy, but not even he deserved to fall prey to such a monster. 

He quickly burst into his nearest emergency hideout which contained rappelling gear and a makeshift hook gun and then into another with a high-calibre rifle. He loaded it with his special magazine of high-explosive projectiles and hoped Hux had enough fight in him to survive a little bit longer. Time seemed to drag and his body moved much too slow for his liking, so he speeded things up a little. He knew there’d be consequences, but right now he didn’t care. 

Hux. Hux was the only thing on his mind. Kylo didn’t want to see him end like this.

If-…

If anyone was supposed to take Hux apart, it was _him_. 

Few minutes later, on the rooftop of the hospital’s surgical pavilion, he aimed his rifle at the nearest threat, a grotesque monstrosity consisting of mouths and eyes. He held his breath and pulled the trigger. By the time the bullet found its mark, he already dropped the rifle and put his heavy-duty gloves on. Next he hooked a rope through the karabiner attached to his harness, and then he was rappelling down onto the main building’s roof. 

He knew there was no way he could destroy this thing, so he didn’t even try. He wrapped his arm around Hux’s slender waist and, holding onto the rope with the other, activated the pulling mechanism before the creature could find out who exactly hit it. 

In less than ten minutes, they were three buildings away and fifteen storeys higher.

He finally let go of Hux, who collapsed onto the floor, his hand pressed against the bleeding wound beneath his tactical vest. 

“Hux. What the fuck.”

The doctor didn’t answer. He just rocked there and back, staring off into the distance. It seemed he was drifting off into a shock. Kylo grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. Hux’s face was covered with gross slime which ran down his cheeks and matted his hair, but his eyes were still human, even though their pupils were contracted into small black pinpoints.

And there was something else. 

He reeked of alcohol. 

Kylo couldn’t believe it. 

“Hux. What… the hell. What did you think you were doing?”

Suddenly the rocking stopped, and the eyes focused on Kylo. 

“Leave me the hell alone.” Hux hissed. 

“Yeah? And how the hell are you planning to return to your labs? You’ve been hit, Hux. You’re contaminated. You need the antidote – and need it quick.”

As soon as these words left his mouth, Hux pulled away. He looked like he was going to faint. The rocking started again. 

“Con…taminated. Contaminated. Contami…nated…” he repeated, then he suddenly doubled over and started to retch. 

Kylo looked away, until-

“Go away. Leave me.”

He looked back at Hux, who was wiping his mouth with his soiled sleeve. His hands shook. 

“Yeah, no. You need help – and you know it. What’s wrong with you? What the hell happened to that cold logic of yours?”

“Leave. Leave now. Better now than later.” Hux said, now in a hoarse whisper. Blood was seeping through his vest. “You’ll leave eventually. Everyone leaves. They leave me behind. Closed behind those dark doors. I can’t get out. Papa says I mustn’t. He says it’s because I’m a runt no one asked for. They’ll get tired of me and throw me away. People. Can’t stay. With people. No matter how hard I try to get out, they just laugh. What’s so funny? I haven’t done anything wrong. I did what they asked of me. I made the antidote, but Snoke shut me down, cut me off, everything is for naught. My research is useless. Even now, even after I found a way to reverse it. He still, he still… and in a couple of years, this place will be bombed, levelled with the ground. No trace of me. I should’ve died in that cellar. Damn Sloane for phoning the police. They didn’t rescue me. No one would rescue me. I never made it out. Not really.”

This soliloquy exhausted whatever strength remained in Hux and it left Kylo so shaken, he didn’t know what to say, how to react. 

So he concentrated on the most pressing issues. 

He tore the unresisting Hux’s clothes open, cleaned the entry and exit wounds to his best abilities and sprayed them with some liquid bandage before wrapping Hux’s arm around his shoulder and half-guiding, half-dragging the man to his apartment. 

As they stood in the decontamination chamber, Kylo suddenly realized that the bioroids might not allow Hux to pass, but it was too late to think of a new plan. Fortunately it soon showed that their master was exempt from the virus check, and so they entered without any trouble. 

Kylo carried Hux to the bathroom, undressed the both of them, as by now he was almost as filthy as Hux, and turned hot water on. He used up the entire dispenser of soap. First he cleaned himself, then Hux. And he saw the full extent of his scars. Those long whip marks he had seen before. The cigarette burns he didn’t. And that one lone stab wound which seemed to have just narrowly missed the liver.

He cleaned Hux’s body as matter-of-factly as possible, but when he squirted some shampoo into his hands and started to massage it into his scalp, Hux suddenly threw his hands around Kylo’s waist and buried his face in Kylo’s midriff. 

The shower was loud, but Kylo didn’t need silence to know what was happening. Hux’s shoulders shook. He patted them. Awkwardly at first, but then with more confidence. Finally, as Hux calmed down, he laid the both of them on the floor, pulled Hux into a gentle embrace and held him, giving him time to relax. 

Once Hux began to nod off right there on the floor, Kylo decided that they were both clean enough. He switched the shower off and the hot air on, and once they were dry, he gave Hux’s wounds a thorough treatment, after which, dressed in fluffy bathrobes, they moved to the research lab. 

“The antidote. You have to take it.” he reminded Hux softly. 

“…why? There’s no point to anything anymore. My research was shut down.”

“But _you_ are still alive. And I am as well. And I’m not going to leave you. You-… you are just… I can’t leave you. I can’t let anyone take you. You being alive is all that matters to me. Now I can see that. And perhaps if your cure really reverses the effects of the virus, if we cure enough people, the outside world will notice.”

“You… won’t leave me…”

“I haven’t now, I won’t ever.”

Hux’s hands started to shake again, but this time he took a hold on himself. 

He got up, left the room, and moments later returned with an epipen. Which he handed to Kylo. 

“If you mean those words, do it.”

Kylo shrugged, grabbed the device, pressed it against Hux’s shoulder, and pushed the button. 

A miserable chuckle escaped Hux’s lips. “Now we’re alike.”

“True. Just the two of us in this city.”

He guided Hux to his bedroom and wanted to leave him there, but Hux grabbed his sleeve. Grabbed – and pulled. 

Kylo understood. 

The bed was narrow, but somehow it managed to fit the both of them. 

Hux snuggled up against him, and Kylo thought his heart would beat right out of his ribcage. This touch. This closeness. It filled his heart like nothing else in the world. 

“You are incredible, you know?” Kylo whispered. “The whole world will eventually know. I’ll make sure of that.”

“You don’t have to.” Came the muttered reply. “As long as you stay right here. Besides. Most know already.”

He smiled and pulled Hux closer, minding his injuries. 

A proper cure will soon be made. 

The two of them will be together from now on. 

The two of them were alive. 

The two of them were alive, they will find a way to destroy that hospital blight, and they will reshape this hell into a paradise. They’ve already learned how to survive. Now they’ll learn how to be happy. Together. 

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Kudos & comments will be much appreciated!


End file.
